Christmas meal

We had our Christmas meal this year on Christmas eve night, with one of our close church friends. My wife had woken up at 5 am to go shopping for the Christmas food, with the whole process of food selection taking her a good 1 1/2 hours. Hence as you can expect there are plenty of photos of the food she had bought for the Christmas meal.

Decorations:

This year we had a special tea candle holder made by my youngest daughter in school for Christmas. This took the center piece of our dinner table. Obviously we also had to have a Christmas cracker for each person seated at the table – 5 in total.

Candle in the candle holder made by my youngest daughterChristmas cracker

Starters:

My wife loves to ensure that there is a great variety of food available at special meals – and lots of it too – so this Christmas was no different. We had so many different appetizers/starters this year, as you can see below (10 in total):

For the main course, we had roasted vegetables, brussel sprouts and roast turkey (served with gravy). By this time, we were already fairly full from the starters, but we still did have some room left for the main course as well. Somehow in the midst of the eating, I forgot to take pictures of the piggy-in-the-blanket (cocktail sausages with bacon wrapped around them) – which are my youngest daughter’s favourite.

Various vegetables – courgette, peppers, parsnip

This year was the first time my daughters were made to eat the Brussel sprouts. My oldest daughter struggled to eat her one sprout, while my youngest declared that it did not taste as bad as she had thought it would – better than baby corn and carrots.

Brussel sprouts

The turkey my wife chose was the smallest she could find – but it was still sized for 12 people – so clearly there would be loads of leftovers afterwards; not that this ever deterred my wife from buying more food. She served it with cranberries, which being slightly sour actually went very well with the turkey.

Roast Turkey with stuffing and served with cranberries

Dessert:

For dessert, we had clementines, mulled wine and flaming Christmas pudding (using cognac to produce the flames). Unfortunately the photos did not turn out as well for the Christmas pudding this year; I did not video it this year, unlike last year.

Clementines – very oriental (like in Chinese New Year)

I heated a bottle of Mulled wine from Tesco with one sliced lemon. This was probably the best tasting mulled wine I’ve had, and only cost £3.50 per bottle. Quite impressive actually.

Mulled wine with lemon

The Christmas pudding was in the hamper which my brother in Singapore had ordered for delivery from a UK company to our house – it is amazing what you can order over the internet; my daughters and I had finished the pack of Scottie Dog shortbread biscuits which was in that hamper, which tasted so divine and we were all sad that there was none left to eat.

Christmas pudding – courtesy of my brother

As with the Christmas pudding each year, we do have to apply the flames by pouring a small amount of flaming cognac onto the pudding.

Christmas pudding after microwaving and ready for the flames to be poured onHeating the cognac to produce the flamesPouring of the flaming cognac onto the Christmas pudding (taken with flash)Flaming Christmas pudding (taken without flash – long exposure and hence the camera shake)

And the final product – Christmas pudding with single cream – my oldest daughter and I absolutely love this (especially the cream).

Christmas pudding with single cream

All in all it was a great meal from a taste experience point of view, although not so from a weight-watching, calorie counting point of view. But I’m supposed to forget about the latter because it is Christmas.